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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   4248 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 10, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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I'm doing another low-stakes/small scale conspiracy theory thread(I think I'll probably start doing these once a quarter or so in the SSQ thread). What are your minor conspiracy theories? Not things that dramatically change how the world works(eg "the davos group is behind the simultaneous rise in both house prices and interest rates in the United States to eliminate home ownership"), nor that would be too interesting and sexy not to be common knowledge if they were both true and had sufficient evidence(eg "Bush was behind 9/11"). What are your boring, small scale schizo posting?

Bullets from me:

  • General health advice about salt is knowably false to most well-informed people. I think the same thing is probably true about cholesterol, but with the added motivation of public health advisors taking bribes from eg Kellogg and Coca-Cola to understate the effects of sugar, so they blame cholesterol instead.
  • The effects of Freon(R-22) on the atmosphere were drastically overstated to keep dupont's control over the provision of refrigerant at around the time the patent on R-22 was expiring.
  • School districts as a group resist adopting the best pedagogical practices to prevent enough improvement in student outcomes for the public/lawmakers to conclude they don't need more money.
  • The world population is probably massively overstated because officials in corrupt countries routinely inflate population figures in their areas of responsibility to try to seek budget increases/international aid.

I’ve always believed that the US government blamed Oswald because they couldn’t actually solve the crime but were afraid of both the potential for nuclear war with Russia and the crisis of confidence that would result from the case being known to be unsolved. The rapidity of the arrest is pretty weird to me — within hours the man was in custody, there was an official story, and the weren’t looking for accomplices or other potential shooters or co-conspirators. They were firm that there was only one shooter despite witnesses stating that there were shots coming from the grassy knoll.

Aliens are a cover story for advanced weapons.

This article decisively convinced me that Oswald did it himself. The battery of evidence presented forecloses the possibility of a second shooter. It was remarkable learning how many of the supposed irregularities which conspiracy theorists have pointed to as evidence of a second shooter were simply wrong e.g. Jim Garrison mistakenly believed the Zapruder film showed three shots being fired in the space of an impossibly fast 5.6 seconds, because he was under the misapprehension that the Zapruder film was filmed at 24fps. It was actually filmed at 18.3fps, meaning it depicts three shots in 8.3 seconds.

Did someone (Mafia, CIA etc.) put Oswald up to it? Sure, maybe. Is it deeply suspicious that Jack Ruby killed Oswald before he could face trial? I think so. But I don't think there's any good reason to dispute the claim that Oswald committed the actual assassination by himself.

It's beyond the scope of rational debate to suggest that Oswald was scapegoated because the US government couldn't solve the crime. The specific, legal evidence against Oswald is overwhelming. Consider:

  • He was seen going into the book depository, by people who knew him.
  • He was seen coming out of the book depository.
  • He was seen in the book depository, in the window where the shots came from.
  • The gunshots and bolt action of the weapon were clearly heard by three men only a few feet away, looking out the window below him.
  • An eyewitness to the shooting, across the street, flagged down a policeman and gave a description of Oswald.
  • He was seen fleeing the scene.
  • He was seen carrying a long package, which he claimed was curtain rods, into the building before the shooting.
  • His rifle was found hidden in the building after the shooting.
  • Repeated ballistics test have proven the weapon had fired at least one of the shots that struck the president.
  • His fingerprints were on the weapon. *His palm print was on the box that was used to steady the weapon.
  • He left all his worldly money out on the TV at his wife's place,and left her a kind of goodbye note. *When a policeman stopped him an hour later, he murdered the policeman.

Add to that that Lee Harvey Oswald was a hyper-political lunatic. Oswald's behavior over the previous years was absolutely consistent with that of an assassin. He was moody, abusive, erratic, and didn't get along with anybody. He promoted his incomprehensible politics night and day. He had earlier attempted to assassinate another national figure, General Edwin Walker. He was everything that you would expect an assassin to be.

What more evidence could you possibly want?

One of the reasons why I don't find most Kennedy conspiracy theories plausible is that the patsy was the least difficult element of the conspiracy to get right, and Oswald was an almost uniquely poor choice of patsy for any of the plausible conspiracies. Re. your case, if the people doing the cover-up were worried about the potential for nuclear war with the Soviet Union, why pin the blame on someone who had defected there and back again rather than a domestic criminal?

Depending on who actually did it, a patsy who fits the stereotype of "angry black man", "Southern conservative", or "mafia" would have worked a lot better for achieving the aims of the conspiracy.

The main reason I don't find most Kennedy conspiracy theories plausible is that the vast majority of historical Presidential assassination attempts look like the Warren Commission version of the Kennedy assasination - a lone assassin who is either outright crazy (e.g. John Hinkley shooting Reagan) or who is not quite normal and has weird fringe political views. So I have a high prior on "lone nut" and the problems with the Warren Commission's ballistics are not sufficient to override it without evidence of a specific conspiracy.

Re. your case, if the people doing the cover-up were worried about the potential for nuclear war with the Soviet Union, why pin the blame on someone who had defected there and back again rather than a domestic criminal?

I brought this up with my father, who can be something of an arrogant midwit outside of his narrow areas of expertise. When I pointed out that Oswald was a diehard socialist who had previously defected to the Soviet Union, he scoffed and said "if he was such a diehard socialist, why didn't he try to defect to Cuba?"

My response was simple: "He did."

In September 1963, he travelled to the Cuban embassy in Mexico City to apply for a visa... Oswald told the embassy officials that he wanted to visit Cuba on his way to Russia, so the Cubans sent him to the Russian embassy to collect a permit to enter the Soviet Union. When it was denied, Oswald burst into tears and started to wave his revolver in the air.

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